Page 78 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

A patient in a wheelchair cried as an undead lunged toward him.

Faith fired.

The first shot took the undead in the chest. It barely slowed. The second hit the head, and it dropped.

Nishi moved like a blade, intercepting the lunging corpse with a low sweep that took its legs out. Faith finished it.

Cal stepped forward, shoulders tense, and for a heartbeat his skin looked like it wanted to roughen into stone. He did not fully shift, but the air around him thickened with that old gargoyle weight.

He grabbed the third undead by the collar and slammed it into the wall hard enough to crack the drywall.

It still tried to bite him.

Cal’s expression turned flat. “No.”

He snapped its neck.

It kept moving.

Cal swore, low and vicious, then held it in place while Faith put a bullet through its skull.

The hallway went quiet except for sobbing and the beep of a monitor somewhere behind a door.

My hands shook, not from fear, but from the draining pull of the bond and the constant effort of keeping the egg stable from across town. The exertion of fighting layered on top of it, and my vision dimmed for a second at the edges.

Cal noticed instantly. He moved closer, hand hovering near my arm. “Salima.”

“I’m fine,” I said automatically.

Faith shot me a look. “Stop lying.”

Nishi turned toward the nurses’ station. “Get patients moved to secure rooms. Lock the doors and barricade them.”

A doctor stared at us, face ghost-pale. “Who are you?”

“People who do not want you eaten,” Faith said. “Move.”

The doctor moved.

I leaned against the wall for half a second, forced breath into my lungs, and reached through the bond toward the egg. The dark patches were still there, still pressing, but they had not spread. That was something. It was also exhausting.

A blur of red hair appeared at the end of the hall.

Delia.

She moved fast, Spencer beside her, two vampires behind them, faces hard and focused. Delia’s gaze swept the corridor, then fixed on the cluster of staff and patients watching with terrified eyes.

“Oh,” she said softly. “This is going to take a while.”

Spencer’s eyes flashed red briefly, then steadied. “We’ll hold the wing.”

Delia nodded once, already stepping toward the witnesses. “You saw a violent patient incident. You did not see monsters. You did not record anything worth sharing.”

Her voice slid into minds like silk.

People blinked.

Phones lowered.